- Says FG won’t stifle press freedom
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has debunked the rumours making the rounds that the Federal Government was behind the arrest last week of publisher of an online newspaper, Premium Times, Dapo Olorunyomi and a reporter working for the paper, Ms. Evelyn Okakwu.
Mohammed added that the Federal Government will not do anything to stifle press freedom, based on its keen awareness that a free press is vital to the success of any democracy.
In a statement on Tuesday in Abuja, the minister said the whole issue of the journalists’ arrest was purely a private affair involving a citizen and a privately-owned newspaper, wondering how that could now be construed as an attempt by the Federal Government, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, to intimidate the press.
The minister said, “We have said it before, and we want to re-state it: the Federal Government has no immediate or long-term plan to stifle press freedom.
“Even the Social Media, with its warts and all, will neither be regulated nor have its operations tampered with.”
